Santamaria, Francisco

Abstract [en]

The main purpose of this thesis was the energetic, environmental and economic comparison of innovative renewable cooling systems with a conventional cooling system in a single family house in a hot weather location. The renewable cooling systems were the deep sea water district cooling system and the solar cold provided by triple absorption system (Climatewell). The conventional system was the vapor compression refrigeration system (multi-split). In the same way, it has been applied a non conventional cooling supply system in the renewable cooling systems. This is the cooling floor.

The single family house studied it has been a single family house called Savoye villa. This building has over 480m2 and a high amount of glazed surfaces. Even its original location is Paris, it is has been placed for this study in the south of Spain in order to obtain a hot weather. The coldest sea water sea water of the south of Spain is located in Cadiz, close to Tarifa and therefore, the villa has been located there.

In this thesis it has been combined both computer method and hand calculation method. In order to calculate the cooling loads of the villa, it has been used two methods: hand made calculations according to the CTE (Spanish Building Code) and computer simulations with IDA ICE4. Result obtained with handmade calculations was higher than results obtained with IDA ICE4 since they uses different input data and process. Energy consumption has been calculated by hand using the cooling load obtained by IDA, whose value was more similar to the standard house cooling load. CO2 emissions and economic values have been calculated by hand according to input data obtained from official, scientific and specialized energy sources.

Results obtained have been very interesting. According to the calculus, energy consumption of triple absorption cycle was 80% lower than with conventional split cooling system and energy consumption with deep sea water district cooling system was 82% lower than with conventional split cooling system. Regarding to CO2 emissions the results were also very similar because since the CO2 emissions depend on the amount of energy consumed. Furthermore, CO2 emissions due to conventional systems were more than a 90% higher than the emissions due to the other two systems because the conventional system not only consumes more electricity but also release more emissions because of the refrigerants. Economically, it is remarkable that without any kind of incentive the conventional system is the cheapest but with 80% of incentives renewable systems become in the cheapest option. It is important to notice that the most expensive parameters of these two renewable cooling systems are the cost of the devices and the installation. Without taking into account devices and installation costs, triple absorption cycle becomes in the cheapest option while the system is working. Finally, it is necessary to say that the used cooling supply system (cooling floor) could not provide easily the necessary cold for this case due to the high cooling loads.

In conclusion, it can be said that both deep sea water district cooling and triple absorption cycle (Cimatewell) represent a good alternative to the conventional split systems specially if the initial investment is covered by incentives because working expenses due to Climatewell system are a 66% lower than the ones produced by the conventional split system and since working expenses of deep sea water district cooling system are a 20% lower than the ones produced by the conventional split system. Without any incentive, deep sea water district cooling system can be a good alternative to conventional split system since the total investment and working costs of both systems are similar. However, it is important to say that even without any incentives cost of triple absorption system (Climatewell) seems very high, this system can be used also for the heating season and therefore, it is probably the best option for places which need both heating and cooling systems.